


Cigarettes in Your Lungs

by pyrrhum



Category: IT (2017), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), M/M, Make-outs, Modern AU, Pining, Recreational Drug Use, Shotgunning, Swearing, They're 17 but that's still underage so tagged underage, no pennywise
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-22
Updated: 2017-10-22
Packaged: 2019-01-21 05:47:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,558
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12450867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pyrrhum/pseuds/pyrrhum
Summary: “Come on! Let loose! Take a load off! Smoke a fat one with me.”“Okay, one, never say that to me again. Two, let me rephrase this for you, since it never seems to get through that thick skull of yours. I can’t smoke. I have asthma. Or did you forget?”(aka, a shotgunning fic)





	Cigarettes in Your Lungs

**Author's Note:**

> 1) the boys are seventeen in this, but that is still underage, so tagged underage  
> 2) the richie-is-a-smoker trope has a serious lack of shotgunning fics so, here you go  
> 3) this is a little work in progress! i wanted it up sooner-rather-than-later though so here we are. ill remove this when im happy with the final product  
> 4) dont do drugs, or something like that

Richie Tozier could be a lot of things, depending on his mood. “Normal Richie setting” had him notched at louder than most, cruder than most, more reprehensible than most. “Extreme Richie setting” had him clocked to braver than most, more caring than most, more thoughtful than most. Richie Tozier was, at the end of the day, _more_ than most.

Eddie knew this well. He knew a lot of things well; like how many germs were in the human mouth (tens of hundreds) and how many minutes it took to bike from his house to Bill’s (five minutes normally, three if he really busted his ass getting there) and the few ways to get Richie to shut up (“Beep beep” was the most tame, duct tape was the least). 

He knew that he probably spent too much time in Richie’s company to be considered _normal_ best friends, but then again, when had anything in Derry ever been _normal_.

That was a lie. Derry was the dictionary definition, look-it-up-and-see-a-picture, of normal, to the point of boring. Derry was Schrödinger’s normal: everything about it screamed plain, but it screamed nonetheless. Everyone was pleasant, until the very moment you bothered to talk to them for more than five minutes. And once you hit the outskirts, you caught the quarry and the cliff-side and the barrens and everything that was the perfect setting for adventure.

Not that the Losers did any major adventuring of the sort. At most, they smoked at the quarry and snuck into the arcade with a copy of the key that Beverly had fashioned with a block of soap and carved wood. _That_ had been her present to Richie on his fifteenth birthday, and they had used it weekly ever since. Even more since the summer had begun.

Which was where Eddie was now. A cliff-side, the quarry, discolored water, the sun stretching to touch her toes to the water and casting long shadows in the process. Summer vacation. Smoking at the quarry with Richie, legs dangling over the edge, high above the water. With the cooling air, Richie has his bomber jacket on and a pair of washed out jeans, while Eddie sticks to his bright blue polo and khakis. Richie’s legs dangled significantly farther than Eddie’s, growth spurts hitting him consistently throughout puberty. Eddie had not been so lucky. But here they were; watching the sun setting and smoking to her departure.

To clarify—Eddie wasn’t smoking. He couldn’t, actually, with some sort of asthma, unless he wanted a coughing fit and a high risk trip to the hospital and unwanted encounter with his mother. He simply sat with Richie in the sunset, enjoying the cool breeze, as the other seventeen year old lifted the joint to his lips and inhaled, chest expanding, holding it, then exhaling the obnoxious smoke. 

Not that Eddie was watching him. Or anything. And not that he had a crush on his best friend, or anything. Definitely not.

It was the two of them, which was not unusual, except in the fact that it was the first week of summer and it was the first time they hadn’t been in the company of the other Losers. For once, everyone else seemed to be busy, or that’s what Eddie assumed. Richie had driven his beat up truck to Eddie’s house and honked the horn until the other boy had rushed out the door, red in the face, calling back to his mom that he’d be back later. Once in the passenger seat, ready to rip into Richie for showing up unannounced, the offending teen held up a bag of weed. “Quarry,” he had said, then floored it, without giving Eddie the opportunity to even buckle his seatbelt.

Suddenly, Richie laughs. The sound of it brings Eddie back to the moment.

“Summertime, baby!” Richie’s laugh is like a boomerang, always hitting him hardest when he first hears it and then when it ends. “Just think, our last summer as dumb ol’ high schoolers. Next year, we’re _seniors_. We’re gonna _own_.”

“And what are we owning, exactly?” Eddie asks with slight sniff. He instantly smells the weed. A god-awful smell. It clings to the damp summer air.

“The _school_ , dumbass. Hell, this entire town!” Richie raises the joint again, inhales, holds it in his lungs, and exhales. “This year is gonna be our year, Eds, I can feel it.”

“Don’t call me Eds.” The response is reflexive at this point.

“What else am I supposed to call you?” Richie asks, head lolling to the side to look at Eddie. He looks relaxed, muscles like jello, ready to slide off the cliff-side and into the water any moment.

“Just Eddie will suffice.”

“Eddie Spaghetti,” Richie teases. “Eds with the meds. Edward the Virgin.”

“Shut the fuck up, Richie!” Eddie snaps, but blushes regardless. Of course he fucking does.

Instead of taking it as an insult, Richie just leans in and pinches one of Eddie’s cheeks with the hand that was not holding the smoldering joint. “So cute,” he coos. “Just adorable.”

Eddie swats his hand away, and Richie laughs again, boomerang, and continues smoking.

Now, though, now they’re shoulder to shoulder, arm to arm, and his skin prickles at the contact. This was another aspect of their friendship that one might not consider _normal_. Best friends typically didn’t spend ninety-five percent of their time together in constant physical contact. Eddie has no idea what Richie thinks when this happens—when they end up with one’s hand on top of the other or legs thrown haphazardly across the other’s lap or constantly trying to keep the other’s hair out of their eyes since _someone_ refuses to get a haircut—but to Eddie, it’s comforting. It’s grounding. It reminds him that there is someone within his reach who likes to have him around. 

And it definitely doesn’t have to do with Eddie’s longstanding crush on his best friend. Nope. Nothing like that.

“We should make a bucket list,” Richie blurts, ever the one to be uncomfortable in any silence. 

“A bucket list?” Eddie snorts. “For what?”

“Things to do senior year.”

“Okay, like what?”

“Get Ben and Bev together.” Richie holds up a finger to begin counting. “Get Stan laid, finally.”

“Ha-ha,” Eddie says dryly. “Anything of substance, Richie?”

“Get you high as balls.”

Eddie scoffs. “You know I don’t smoke, dumbass.”

In response, Richie waves the joint in front of Eddie’s face, the movement slow enough with the telltale sign that Richie is, as he put so eloquently, high as balls. The smell gets so much stronger, and Eddie shoves him away. “Haven’t you ever wanted to try, though?” Richie asks.

His response is curt. “No.”

“Come on! Let loose! Take a load off! Smoke a fat one with me.”

“Okay, one, never say that to me again. Two, let me rephrase this for you, since it never seems to get through that thick skull of yours,” this phrase is accompanied by Eddie flicking the side of Richie’s head, and the other teen laughs and rocks backwards, slightly delayed in response time. “I _can’t_ smoke. I have asthma. Or did you forget?”

“Aw, you know I’d never forget that about you, Eddie Spaghetti.” The sentence has Eddie’s heart hurt a little. In a good way. Probably. “But there’s—okay, so like, there’s this thing, you can do instead.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Wanna try it?”

“No!”

“You don’t even know what it is!”

“I don’t care, Richie!”

“Eds! Eddie! Please!”

Richie is using his signature doe eyes on him now, large behind the glasses that are thick no matter what frames he uses. Big and brown and pleading, saying what Richie never would say aloud: _please, for me?_

And Eddie is notoriously weak for Richie’s signature doe eyes.

“Fine,” he mutters, turning his head away. The sun is just touching the water now, slowly extinguishing herself. “What’s this _thing_.”

Richie is silent for a moment, which is equal levels miraculous and terrifying, so Eddie looks back at him. Richie is still staring back at him. “Do you trust me?” he asks, quietly. Vulnerably. A shift into a more intimate moment.

Eddie feels like he’s gonna throw up. He always feels this, when things get like this, when its just the two of them.

“Yeah,” he responds, just as quietly, not wanting to break the moment. “Of course.”

Richie’s face breaks into a blinding smile, outshining the setting sun. “Inhale when I exhale,” he says quickly, then is taking a pull from the joint.

Eddie hardly has the time to say, “What,” before Richie is leaning in and pressing his open lips to Eddie’s.

His eyes go wide, probably comically so, about to bug out of his head. Richie raises his eyebrows, and exhales, directly into Eddie’s mouth. For the briefest second, Eddie is caught up thinking about the hundreds of thousands of germs in the human mouth, about the fact that Richie just blew fucking _smoke_ into his mouth, but then he remembers Richie’s instructions—he follows his orders and inhales.

Watered down smoke filters down his throat and fills his lungs, warm like fire rolling through his chest. The warmth instantly spreads to his fingertips, bypassing his hands, and he feels the fog fill his head as well. Metaphorically speaking. And Richie is still staring him down, glasses just about pressed to Eddie’s face, lips chapped, noses pressed awkwardly against each other, and Eddie’s heart is beating so hard its going to break his fucking ribcage. 

And Eddie wants it this moment to last _forever_.

And then Richie pulls back.

Eddie exhales…and finds himself coughing.

“What—” he presses a hand to his chest, violently about to hack up a goddamn lung, “the _fuck_!”

“Whoa, whoa, calm down, Kaspbrak.” Richie pounds an open palm to Eddie’s back. “Deep breaths!” Instinctively, Eddie grasps around for his inhaler despite its absence, but, again upon Richie’s instructions, takes in a deep breath. The coughing fit almost immediately begins to subside. Richie gives him a lopsided grin, hand still resting on Eddie’s back, burning a hole through his shirt 

“It’s called shotgunning,” he explains.

“It’s called being disgusting!” Eddie rasps. “Do you know how many of your germs you just gave me?” 

“ Not to mention your mom’s,” Richie adds, smile turning into a smirk.

“Fuck off, Trashmouth!”

Richie laughs. “Come on, Eds. I just figured it’d be an easier way to get you high without you having to actually smoke. Helps avoid that bitch named asthma.” He shrugs. “Seems like it worked.”

“Sounds like you’ve put a lot of thought into this,” Eddie mutters. His entire body feels a little warmer, but its hard to determine whether that is the effect of the drugs or the fact that _Richie Tozier might as well have just kissed him_.

Again, Richie shrugs. “Wanna try again?”

Despite his better judgement, Eddie responds, “Yes!” too quickly.

After another quick drag, Richie’s lips are back on his within seconds, and Eddie’s hand instinctively grasps at Richie’s upper-arm, fisting the material of the stupid bomber jacket that Richie hadn’t gotten tired of yet. Eddie is hyperconscious this time, focusing on the feeling of Richie breathing smoke down his throat. Richie starts to pull back once he’s finished, but Eddie chases after him, keeping their lips connected. He doesn’t want it to _end_.

Richie breaks the…kiss? and presses their foreheads together. “Slow down there, Eds,” he chuckles, voice gravely and smoke ruined. Eddie exhales slowly, blowing the smoke in the space between them. “You good?”

“Don’t call me Eds,” Eddie says, voice heavy. His whole body feels heavy now, and he leans into Richie more. His hand is still grasping his bomber jacket. Richie’s open palm is still on his back. “Christ. Je-sus. Fuck me.”

“I don’t think Jesus would be the kind of guy to do that,” Richie jokes. “Now, me on the other hand…”

“Shut,” is the only word Eddie gets out, before coughing. He doesn’t see it with their close proximity, but he _feels_ Richie’s brows knit in concern.

“You need your inhaler?” Richie asks, oddly serious.

“Didn’t bring it,” Eddie rasps.

“I have an extra.”

“I—” Eddie pauses, caught off-guard. They were seventeen now, and carrying around Eddie’s extra inhaler was something Richie did when they were _thirteen_. “I don’t need it,” he eventually settles on. “Just gotta…deep breaths.”

Richie laughs. “Look at you, not even two puffs in and already high.”

“You’re…shut up, Tozier.”

“Make me, Kaspbrak.”

In his foggy brain, Eddie thinks the only way he could get Richie to shut up is if he kissed him and kept his mouth occupied. And suddenly, it doesn’t seem like such a bad idea. He can’t think of any reasons _not_ to, and is actually quickly coming up with reasons _to_ do it. Among those reasons is that kissing Richie is something he’s wanted to do for _years_.

So he does. Eddie closes the small space between them and presses his closed lips to Richie’s.

The hand still on Eddie’s back pushes them closer together, chest to chest, and Richie opens his mouth and then they’re making out, full-fledged, tongues and spit and teeth clacking. Eddie wraps a hand around the back of Richie’s neck, trying to pull him even closer, as if he can possibly do so. There’s the distinct temperature difference between the coolness of the setting summer air and the heat of Richie’s body, and Eddie leans into that warmth as much as he can.

Then, for a third fucking time, Richie pulls back again. Frustrating.

“Stop that,” Eddie says.

Richie looks at him bemused. Eddie is practically in Richie’s lap, and he has the audacity to look _bemused_. Like Eddie was the funny one. Not that Eddie isn’t funny, but—

“Don’t wanna waste a good thing,” Richie says, looking at the joint in the hand that isn’t toying with the material of Eddie’s shirt on his back.

Suddenly, the shorter boy is nervous despite the fact, you know, Richie’s tongue had been in his mouth hardly fifteen seconds prior. “If I—I mean, if you don’t wanna…”

“What? Nonono, noooo.” Richie laughs, his glasses sliding down his nose a little. “I, just—”

And then he throws the joint off the cliff into the water.

Eddie gapes at him.

“What?” Richie uses his now free hand to comb his fingers through Eddie’s hair, then settles it on the back of his head. “C’mere.”

“You just…I thought you didn’t want to waste a good thing?”

“I don’t,” Richie replies, pulling Eddie in for another kiss. As Richie fully pulls him into his lap, he gets it.

“What, so I’m a good thing now?” he teases as he pulls back. A thin line of saliva still connects them—gross, he thinks—but Richie groans and then lays down, on his back, pulling Eddie on top of him. Richie’s legs still dangle off the cliff-side at his knees, but Eddie comfortably straddles him, blanketing him. Nose to nose now, Eddie stares into Richie’s large brown eyes. He could fall right into them. Drown in them, probably.

“Yeah, fuck, you caught me, Eds.” Richie runs his thumb over the patch of skin behind Eddie’s ear, and the boy on top of him shivers. “You’re a fuckin’ good thing, fuck it, you’re a great thing. Now come _here_ , I’ve wanted to make out with you since eighth grade.”

God, if that ain’t the truth. 

The whole thing is messy; the two of them rolling around in the dirt to try and get the upper-hand on each other—and at one point Richie almost slides off the edge into the water because they’re too distracted with each other to notice the proximity of the cliff-side. But Eddie is happy to discover that curling his tongue in Richie’s mouth makes the other boy shake, and equally happy when Richie finds Eddie’s weakness to the spot right under his jaw.

The sun sets on them after some time, the air finally cooling enough that Eddie gets goosebumps despite how warm Richie is under him. When he pulls back, Richie gazes up at him, looking a little dazed.

“Holy fuck,” he murmurs, removing a hand from Eddie’s hair to place his thumb on Eddie’s kiss-swollen lower lip.

“What?” he whispers back, voice hoarse.

“You’re beautiful, Eddie Kaspbrak.”

Eddie feels the blush up to his ears. “And you’re a goddamn sap, Richie Tozier.”

“Yeah, fuck, yeah I am.”

“Can we—?”

“—go on an official date? Yes, yes, a thousand times yes,” Richie cuts him off, mouth back to running a mile a minute now that it’s not otherwise occupied. While he talks, he sits up, hands braced on Eddie’s lower back as he keeps the other boy in his lap. “I’ll take you to a five star restaurant right now, fuck it, we’ll use my mom’s credit card and I’ll buy you lobster because it’s fucking Maine and I’ll get grounded but sneak through your window every night anyways and—”

“I was gonna say, can we move indoors somewhere? It’s cold now.” 

“Oh. Shit.” Richie pauses for a moment, looking as close to bashful as Richie Tozier can get. “Yeah. Fuck. Did I, um, get too ahead of…”

“If that indoors is a restaurant for a date, I won’t be complaining,” Eddie tells him with a smile, cupping Richie’s face with his hands, feeling the barest hint of scruff on his palms. 

Even in the darkness, he can see Richie’s face break into an ear-to-ear grin. “Awesome.” And then he’s leaning forward and kissing him again, much slower and much less hurried now, as if he’s trying to enjoy the moment. Which Eddie is, quite frankly—enjoying the moment. His heart feels like its gonna burst out of his chest any second, he’s so goddamned happy.

“We could also just stay here and make out,” Richie offers, pulling back again. Eddie makes a frustrated noise. “Although, I have to say, nothing past second base, or else your mom might get jealous—” 

He laughs when Eddie swats him on the chest. “You ruined it,” Eddie says, getting to his feet, knees only a little wobbly. “You fucking ruined it, bye, your trash-mouth is never getting near mine or any part of me ever again.”

Speaking of which, he probably has anywhere from one to a thousand hickies forming on his neck from where Richie had gone full on Dracula. The thought makes him nervous. And excited. He feels like a rebellious teen; getting blazed at the quarry and possibly going home with hickies and making out with the best friend he’s been head over heels for since he realized romantic feelings and friendship ones could get pretty damn muddled.

“Eddie! Come on, don’t be like that, baby,” Richie whines from the ground.

“ _Don’t_ call me baby,” Eddie threatens, for once towering above him.

“You can’t leave! You don’t even have the car keys!”

“You don’t know what I was doing when my hands were on your bony ass,” is Eddie’s final quip as he starts to walk towards Richie’s truck, feigning confidence.

Richie scrambles to his feet, supposedly to quickly riffle through his pockets, then laughs when he discovers they are still in their designated location. There is the sound of a few heavy footfalls, then someone is wrapping their arms around Eddie’s middle and lifting him off the ground, spinning him.

“Put me down! Fuck! Let go of me, Richie!” he shouts.

It does the trick, thankfully. Eddie’s feet hit the dirt, and Richie turns him so they’re facing each other, his hands resting on Eddie’s waist. He beams down at Eddie now, hair wild, glasses slightly askew. The moonlightcreates a soft halo around Richie’s curls as Eddie looks up at him, and he feels his heart physically _ache_.

“You’re fucking amazing, Eddie Kaspbrak,” Richie says. “Goddamn beautiful.”

Eddie almost mirrors his words, about to say, _you’re the beautiful one,_ the words on the tip of his tongue. He runs his hands up Richie’s clothed chest, resting them there. “I—” his tongue feels thick in his mouth, like molasses. He wants to tell Richie so many things, like when he first realized that he had a crush on Richie and that the feelings he had for his best friend weren’t exactly normal, or when he decided to start leaving his window unlocked for Richie to come through he always hoped that Richie would come in and just spoon him until they both fell asleep. Or how he secretly always thought the two of them had the perfect height difference, or how he likes seeing Richie without his glasses but really, he doesn’t need to wear contacts all the time because he’s beautiful anyway. Or how he always feared that Richie would find out about his crush and call him disgusting or how he kept quiet for _so long_ because he valued their friendship over the off-handed chance that Richie would maybe want to date him too.

Instead, he says, “Take me to dinner, Tozier, you coward,” and stands on his tiptoes and kisses him. And when he feels Richie smile against his lips, he can’t help but smile too.

(He will, inevitably, tell Richie those things and more over the McDonald’s shakes and burgers they share that evening).

**Author's Note:**

> please talk to me at kidkaspbrak.tumblr.com, its lonely in my secular interests


End file.
